


Pieces

by bageloccasionallywrites



Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst, Racing, Sad, Sad Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-26
Updated: 2020-11-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:29:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27727506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bageloccasionallywrites/pseuds/bageloccasionallywrites
Summary: When you have everything you could ever want in life, fate sometimes has a way of destroying all of it in one fell swoop.
Kudos: 5





	Pieces

Addi was one of those lucky people who had everything they could ever want in their life. She had good friends, more than enough money to sustain herself while also giving it to people who needed it more, her dream career as a Formula 1 racing driver… And her wife, Kate, the love of her life, the strong, intelligent, incredible woman she had been head over heels for since high school. She had everything she could ever want. At this point, what could go wrong?

As it turned out, everything.

8:00 PM  
When Addi got home and saw that the lights were out and Kate’s car wasn’t in the driveway, she didn’t think anything of it at first. Humming a soft tune, she went inside and flopped down on the couch. She texted Kate, “When are you going to be home, and what do you want for dinner?” She hit send, but got an error saying “Message failed to send.” Now she started to get a little worried. Maybe she just doesn’t have cell signal. Yeah, that’s probably it. She decided to start making dinner, burgers, something she knew Kate would like.

9:00 PM  
An hour had passed, and Kate still wasn’t home. She had put the burgers in the oven to keep them warm. Addi started to get even more anxious, and decided to try and call Kate. She dialed her number and pressed call. Immediately, she was greeted with a computerized voice, saying that the call couldn’t be completed, which meant that Kate’s phone wasn’t turned off, out of cell signal, or out of battery; in those cases it would go straight to voicemail. Don’t worry about it, everything’s fine, nothing happened, everything’s fine. She put her phone down, and almost immediately it buzzed with an incoming call. She frantically grabbed the phone, hoping it was Kate, but it wasn’t. It was some number that she didn’t recognize. She picked it up. “Hello?” “Hello is this Addison Rocha?” the caller replied. Addi said yes. “Okay. I… have some bad news for you.” Addi’s breath caught. Maybe it’s not about her, maybe it’s something else. Uh, bills maybe?? Maybe I missed a bill? “Your wife…” No. No. No. No. No. “Katherine…” No, please. Please let her be okay. “There was a car accident…” Nononononononono. “She…” Addi could barely breathe. The other person shakily exhaled. “She didn’t make it out.” 

Addi couldn’t speak to reply to this. She couldn’t think, couldn’t see, couldn’t hear the person apologizing and explaining other details, couldn’t breathe. All she felt was pain, ultimate, pure pain. A piece of her soul had just been violently torn away from her. She didn’t know what to do without Kate. She never wanted to think about it, because she knew she wouldn’t be able to deal with the idea of her leaving. But now Addi didn’t have a choice. She was gone. Gone.

10:00 AM, the next day  
She didn’t know how long she had been lying on the floor, sobbing, pounding her fists on the wooden floorboards, or if she had even slept. Time was meaningless. All she knew was that Kate was dead. She heard a knock at the door, but couldn’t bring herself to reply or get up and open the door. The knocking ceased, and then she heard a voice. “Addi? It’s Sydney.” Sydney, the closest friend Addi had, second only to Kate. She pulled herself up to let Sydney in; she could barely stand, her legs were shaking so badly; from fatigue from likely not sleeping or from shock she couldn’t tell. She trudged over to the door and opened it, and then she fell into Sydney’s arms, where she was ready to catch her. Sydney helped her over to the couch, cradled Addi’s head in her arms, and began to sob. She had been very close to Kate, and Addi knew her death had destroyed a piece of her as well. Neither of them spoke, they just held each other, easing their pain in experiencing it together.

4:00 PM, two weeks later  
Addi almost hadn’t gone to the funeral, but she thought that would be disrespectful and selfish of her. So she went, and it was heart-wrenching. This was the first time she had seen Kate since the morning before the accident, when she had kissed Addi goodbye and said she would see her later. Addi nearly broke down again at the memory. How she longed to see her again, to stroke her long, soft hair, to kiss her lips, to talk for hours on end with her again. How she missed her.

She had a race the next day, one of the most important of her career, yet still she was told by her boss that she didn’t have to go because of what she was dealing with. But Addi insisted. She HAD to do this race; her career practically depended on it. She had to do it for Kate. Her phone buzzed with a text from Sydney. “Are you sure you want to do this? I know how important this race is, but you’re in no condition to race right now.” Addi clenched her hands, thinking. No. She had to do it. She would push herself to the limits to do this, for Kate.

12:00 PM, race day  
It was a cold, rainy, miserable day. Her teammates were still trying to convince her to bow out of the race, bur Addi refused. This was not a choice in her mind. This was a requirement. Her team, seeing how she wouldn’t back down, reluctantly relented, and Addi climbed into the car. She put her helmet on and pressed the button to start the engine. As she sat in the car, waiting for the engine to warm up, she thought of Kate. She no longer felt grief at her death, just emptiness. There was a void in her soul where Kate had once been, and nothing could ever refill that. She was broken beyond repair.

With the Formula 1 car’s engine now warmed up, the team rolled it into the pit lane. Addi put it into gear, and started forward out of the pit lane and started her qualifying lap.

Her lap put her in fifth position for the start of the race, and she placed her car in the according starting position. As the lights turned green, she made a vow to herself. “I will win this. For Kate.” And they were off. The roar of the engines made Addi feel alive again, and restored some of the feeling lost with Kate’s death. Oh how she loved the thrill of racing. It never got old.

Twenty laps in, Addi’s car desperately needed a tire change. But tire changes cost time, and more time in the pits meant positions lost, and she needed to hold her position. Rational thought would have said that she could regain places lost while in the pits, but all rational thought had left her in her need for victory. She had enough fuel for quite a few more laps, so she kept going, despite her team’s urging her to come in for a tire change. She pushed the car hard, and it was paying off; she was only a few seconds behind the leader. C’mon, c’mon. She began braking later, flooring it out of the corners sooner, and becoming overall more and more reckless with each lap. Down the hill after the first corner after the start line, she was close, oh so close to grabbing first place. She pushed the car to its absolute limits, disregarding the pouring rain and the nearly shredded tires. The first place car braked, and Addi shot past, braking hard just after. And then there was a bang as one of the tires tore itself to pieces. And the brakes locked up, causing the car to lose all grip on the wet track. She went off the track and into the gravel meant to stop off-track cars, but she was going too fast.

Time seemed to slow to a crawl.

Resigning herself to her fate, Addi felt a sense of peace. Continuing on after the death of the closest person to her she had ever known was nearly impossible; this was her release. As the car got ever closer to the wall, she took a deep breath in.

The car hit the wall.

In her final moments, she had one final thought. I will see you again.

And then, darkness.


End file.
